The Future of Work: How Social Business Platforms Change Everything

While social networks like Twitter and Facebook and mobile platforms like Android and the iPhone duke it out for control over new advertising opportunities in the consumer space, social business platforms like Salesforce.com, LinkedIn, and Spiceworks are looking to take advantage of the largely untapped the “9-to-5” market – or the eyes and ears of the workers while they do their jobs.

The value of this elusive business audience has not gone unnoticed by advertisers. Platform providers are answering the call of brands and advertisers wanting to reach the business audience. Innovative new market research techniques, social ad formats, marketing programs, sponsored apps and in-app purchasing are designed to tap into the workers’ mindshare and sell them products and services while and where they do their jobs.

This session will draw from and share many of the lessons learned from Spiceworks over the past five years as it has grown to include nearly 25% of the IT pros in the world and aggregate close to $200 billion in annual technology budgets. Topics include:

How did a social business platform arise so quickly in IT and which industries are likely to be impacted next?

How do technologies and platforms such as Salesforce.com’s Chatter, Twitter, Yammer, LinkedIn and Facebook play with industry-specific social business platforms?

How does marketing change as social business platforms become the de facto marketplace for entire industries?

How do companies sell their products most effectively, with lessons learned from leaders such as Intel, Rackspace, Microsoft and more.

Jay Hallberg

Spiceworks

In 2006, Jay Hallberg co-founded Spiceworks – described by TechCrunch as “the Facebook for IT.” Spiceworks social business platform for IT professionals & buyers reaches 20 percent of the global small and midsized business (SMB) market and it’s transforming how nearly $200 billion worth in technology products and services each year are managed, marketed and sold. Jay frequently speaks on disruptive business models, B2B social marketing, and SMB IT trends at top industry events, including the Web 2.0 Summit, IAB, Interop, Cloud Computing Expo, among others. Jay holds an MBA from Harvard and engineering degree from the University of Illinois.